Boyle Blows Sunshine for Fox Searchlight

Danny Boyle, the director of the hit indie pics 28 Days Later, Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, has begun principal photography on a sci-fi effects film for Fox Searchlight Pictures. Produced by DNA films and lensed under the working title The Untitled Sunshine Project, the film will have a crew of astronauts attempt to keep the sun from burning out.

Written by 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland, Sunshine takes place 50 years in the future as a crew of eight men and women are called to be mankind’s last hope. However, their mission to breathe new life into the sun is jeopardized when they lose contact with Earth and pick up a distress beacon from a spaceship that disappeared seven years earlier. Soon the astronauts are fighting not only for their lives, but their sanity.

DNA Films’ Andrew Macdonald is producing the pic, with Fox Searchlight VP of production Joshua Deighton overseeing for the indie arm of 20th Century Fox. There is no word on which vfx houses will be assigned to deliver the movie’s visuals.